The different contributions of the Lake Poets to Romanticism
William Wordsworth 1170-1850 * Was in France. Took part in the French revolution. Studied St James’ College at Cambridge, born in the Lake District in the north of Lancaster, near Grasmere, mere means lake. He had a cottage there. He came back there and settled. Lake District hadn’t been touched by the Industrial revolution – pristine land (untouched) Lyrical ballads , collection written together with Coleridge. He rejects the artificial ryming system of classicist poetry. He is inspired by natural world around him. While imposing a colonial imagination on it. He didn’t try to reproduce what he saw only. * Coleridge focused on supernatural, magical, mysterious, which is also with aspect to woman. * he stressed the wholeness (sages - mudrci, lore - vedeni, to dessech - rozebirat), we murder the wholeness of things when we try to analyze them intellectually. His poem is a manifest of a new romantic idee. Evil in romanticism is always connected with fragmentation. * Schiller – God the force that connected things, evil made things apart. * His period of best poetry lasted only 10 years * God is present at nature. Divine forms are always present. Very skillful in recreating the life of nature. Individual particular scenes in natural life – very radical switch from classicism. * His descriptions of nature are always immediate and fresh. No other poet has caught so well the beauty of flowers, trees and mountains. * Before him poetry had a subject. After him subject of poetry was the poet’s own subjectivity. His poetry has a therapeutic quality – healing power for himself and his reader. Tries to teach people to renovate their spirit. * Nature is religious in its scope and intensity. God was everywhere manifest in the harmony of nature. He felt deep kinship between nature and the soul of humankind. Intimations of Immortality * a platonic (a follower of Plato), the soul of man is eternal. From the world of ideas. That’s only the child is still very close to the world of ideas. Has vision of immortality. As the child becomes old, the vision fails. At the end of his life is desperate. Suggests stoicism as a right way to approach old age. The Prelude , he was writing it for 10 years. He describes his development as a poet, thinker and man. It deals with his infancy, school days. Cambridge, his walking tours. French political awakening. It is remarkable for its psychological insight into the significance of childhood experience. The world is too much with us * “getting and spending” we waste “our powers” = trying to get money, we lose energy, consuming way of life, we lose time * “Little we see in nature that is ours.” = we belong there, but we forgot it. We lost every contact with nature. We can’t communicate with it, take its advices. * “have given our hearts away, a sordid boon” = strašný dar, we have given hearts for something we don’t get, for something which is not worth it. * the 1st stanza already contains everything thematically speaking. It opens the theme and concludes it as well. 2nd and 3rd stanzas seem to extend it or explain it in greater detail. * “sea”, moon, winds” – they all are offering something to us but we don’t appreciate it. It shows us the beauty, we are “like sleeping flowers” – closed, hiding our faces, we are “out of tune” – we can’t sing (see, hear, feel) the same way nature does, but we don’t mind it. * “Great God!” – a Christian God, but he would rather be a pagan. They were closer to nature. Their beliefs were natural religions. Their gods were everywhere in the nature around them. They were somehow “integrated” in the system of nature. * “sight of Proteus rising from the sea” – A natural god that is not impossible to see. To meet. To get close to. * “World” = civilization. The main contrast is between nature x civilization. I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud * Characteristic for Romanticism – he starts with a walk in the countryside – very specific, walking + lonely – two obsessions of romanticism * He spent his youth in the Lake District. The nature there had a great influence on him. People who lived in the L. D. were not tenants as in other parts of England. They were somehow independent. It reflects in his poetry. * His friendship with Colleridge. They were very different personalities. The two greatest poets of the time. * His intention to use some scenes from the life of people in the countryside was laughed at. Some of his poems contain “didactic” tone. * Many of his poems are about his meetings with people and nature. He stresses the experience of the moment and a complicated esthetic, moral and emotional reflection the meetings provoke. * He uses everyday language, his way how to refuse the formality of classicist diction. * In his best period he managed to put into life is impressions from the childhood in Lake District. * In this poem in the first three stanzas he uses past tense, the walk happened one day. * In the last stanza uses different tense, present simple, it’s repeated action, the effect of the walk is repeated. Samuel Taylor Coleridge , 1772-1834 * There weren’t much of his poetry, he contributed only 2 poems to Lyric ballads * His works are not based on his personal experience in contrast to Wordsworth. His poetry is purely imaginative. The themes are fantastic and highly magical. * He utterly loved the sister of Wordsworth’s wife. But he couldn’t divorce. It all led to unhappiness and depressions. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner , Kubla Khan , Christabel , his 3 important poems, only one of them is finished. * Drug addicted, at the time of his strongest addiction he wrote several great lectures, dramas and journalist writings * Among English romantics of both generations, was the best speaker, most widely read. His period as a poet was even shorter than Wordsworth’s * Studied German philosophy: Kant, as literal critic, theorist of romantic age. His criticism is still recognized, the greatest mind of romanticism. His addiction started by taking opium against pains. * Focused on exotic, reflected in both: mysterious, magical, subjective matter and atmosphere, astonishing imagery. Influence by pre-romantic gothic novel. Kubla Khan * Strange and mysterious poem. There’s a famous Colleridge’s description how the poem was written. According to his own words, he composed it at remote farm in South-East England in a dream caused by anodyne. Composed 200 – 300 verses. As soon as he woke up he started writing the composition. He had written about 50 verses when somebody came in to have a talk about something. When Colleridge got back to writing he realized he had forgotten everything. But this is only what he says, we don't know if that's a true story. * Once he uttered that he got under control of some power. Under it he started composing unintentionally as a tool of some upper power. Most of his utterances were disproved. He had neuroses. He wanted to avoid responsibility for his work. * Exceptional, exclusive, its images seem like an opium dream somewhere. In some passages appears a mysterious voice as well as more silent tone describing “gardens bright with sinuous rills.” * Idyllic mystery of Kubla’s home is still beside its opposite – sunless sea, caves, lifeless ocean. The river Alph connects all this. * Some features have strong sexual context and some of them show what guilt he felt in connection with this theme. * From the beginning it seems the poem is a narration. Up to the 29/30th verse: “And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far/ancestral voices prophesying war!” but then the poem and the dream starts to fall apart into small pieces. Following verses somehow repeat what had already been said. Then they turn into a vision the poet once had. Here he comes into the poem for the first time – about the girl with a dulcimer, for him she is probably a source of inspiration. In this place, the very poetic vision becomes the theme itself. Elsewhere is the composition mysterious. Full of opposites putting together far things. A part of narration without narration. It attracts but as a whole can’t be taken at once.